Carly Fiorina Thinks Corporations Should Be Able To Deny Paid Leave To New Mothers

August 12th, 2015 | Bryce Covert

After Jake Tapper, host of CNN’s State of the Union, asked Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina about Netflix’s announcement that it will offer a year of unlimited paid family leave, the former Hewlett Packard CEO said she opposes any requirement that employers offer their workers paid leave.

“I don’t think it’s the role of government to dictate to the private sector how to manage their businesses, especially when it’s pretty clear that the private sector, like Netflix…is doing the right thing because they know it helps them attract the right talent,” she said. “I’m not saying I oppose paid maternity leave. What I’m saying is I oppose the federal government mandating paid maternity leave to every company out there.”

But the vast majority of private sector employers don’t seem to agree that offering paid leave is the right thing to do. Only 12 percent of workers in the private sector get paid family leave from work. These benefits are also far more likely to be offered to higher-income, white collar workers and not to the low-income workers who may need it the most to be able to afford time off. Just 5 percent of the lowest-paid 25 percent of employees get paid family leave, compared to 21 percent of the highest 25 percent.

Fiorina noted that while she was at Hewlett Packard, the company offered paid maternity and paternity leave. Current online versions of its employee handbook only refer to “several leave opportunities to provide additional time when you need it, including [unpaid] Family and Medical (FMLA) Leave, state family leaves, [and] parental leave” without specifying how much leave employees might get. But in response to a New York Times inquiry in 2013, the company said new mothers get six weeks of full pay under a short-term disability plan with additional weeks at lower pay, while new fathers get just 10 days.

Netflix and other technology companies have made headlines for far more generous leave: Netflixannounced unlimited paid leave for the first year after the arrival of a child, while Google offersfive months and many others offer 17. But they are the exception to the norm. And without a requirement, leave policies will differ wildly from workplace to workplace.

The lack of a federal law requiring maternity and paternity leave makes the U.S. a lonely outlier on the world stage. It is one of just three countries among 185 that doesn’t guarantee new mothers paid time off, while another 70 include new fathers.

Three states have decided to enact their own policies: California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. And the evidence from those experiments goes against Fiorina’s claim that it would be “ineffective” and “hypocritical” for government to mandate leave when it “hasn’t gotten its basic house in order.” In California, the vast majority of businesses report that the paid leave law had either a positive impact or none at all on profitability, employee performance, and productivity and it helped reduce turnover. In New Jersey, the majority of businesses also say that it hasn’t hurt their finances, while some saw similar benefits.

Paid family leave is generally found to keep women in the labor force and to expand it. The savings in turnover can come to an estimated $89 million a year for the country’s employers. But the lack of paid leave is one of the reasons that the country’s rate of women in the labor force is being far outpaced by other developed countries.

Fiorina has also come out against issues related to women’s equality in the past. She opposes the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is aimed at closing the gender wage gap, and blames the gap on unions and government bureaucracies.

“This blog originally appeared at ThinkProgress.org on August 10, 2015. Reprinted with permission.”

Bryce Covert is the Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress. She was previously editor of the Roosevelt Institute’s Next New Deal blog and a senior communications officer. She is also a contributor for The Nation and was previously a contributor for ForbesWoman. Her writing has appeared on The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Nation, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, and others. She is also a board member of WAM!NYC, the New York Chapter of Women, Action & the Media.